During the 2007 holiday shopping season, many ecommerce shoppers waited until the last minute to make their purchases from ecommerce Web sites. Late final order dates, with ecommerce retailers offering delivery in time for Christmas as late as December 22nd) may have contributed. In many cases, offering late delivery dates coincided with more online traffic.

Robin Goad at Hitwise posted a chart showing final order dates for businesses in the UK, and these ecommerce businesses’ busiest days online:

The orange dots show Web sites of brick-and-mortar retailers, while the blue are online retailers only. As you can see, there is a higher incidence of busy days for the retailers with physical locations in terms of late delivery dates. Here is one explanation that Goad offers:

This points to a possible explanation for the greater correlation of the orange dots: consumers feel that they can order with high street retailers at the last minute, because they can always pop into the shop if things go wrong.

You can see the increase in traffic in a trend as the later final order dates approach. While this information is true in Britain, it is probably also likely true here in the US. I know that I ordered all my gifts from online only retailers earlier in the month — I wanted to make sure they all arrived well before Christmas.

But this late delivery thing isn’t just about holiday shopping. It can boost your ecommerce traffic year-round. Late delivery dates can put your ecommerce Web site on the map as one with quick turnaround. This can be helpful for birthday and anniversary gifts, as well as for other holidays like Valentine’s Day, Easter and Mother’s and Father’s Days. When shoppers know they’ve missed the chance for delivery, the urgency to acquire the item increases. Clearly stating your delivery and order cutoff dates and times encourage procrastinators to visit your store.

Another lesson? Brick-and-mortar retailers can benefit from an online presence. Ecommerce Web sites increase the number of people you reach. There were physical presence retailers (though admittedly not many) whose traffic peaked after the final order date. Apparently shoppers were still looking for something. Ecommerce Web sites can encourage people to visit your store to buy products searched for online — even if they can’t have them delivered to their doors in time.

Tags: boost traffic, eCommerce, ecommerce shoppers, ecommerce traffic, ecommerce Web sites, late delivery dates